“Authority and expert voices in the discourse of history”

This study proposes an overview of the types of voices involved in the presentation of historical research and discusses them with reference to the role they play in the construction of the writer’s identity. Taking a broad view of the writer’s voice, and focusing on the interplay between textual voice and time setting, the study shows how the Writer establishes a position by evaluating both entities or events in the world of the narrative and the sources used to reconstruct events. Different lexicalizations are shown to express modal evaluation – the writer’s taking responsibility for the predication and the predicate’s characterization in terms of certainty – and affective evaluation – categorizing phenomena and evaluating them in terms of desirability. The study also shows how the peculiar temporal perspective of historical discourse allows the writer access to further knowledge, e.g. in speculation about future events. with writers showing forms of alignment and disalignment with the voice of experts, i.e. sources that are given voice in the text. The voices of experts (Expert voices) are shown to have a significant role in the construction of the writer’s argument.